Electricity in Rural England

[rhiannon_s]

Hey all. I'm tentatively plotting a story that takes place in a village in England's West Country. Precise location in the West Country doesn't really matter at this point, as I'm hoping to keep it as vague as possible, but I am trying to find out when electricity started getting introduced across the region. One of my principal characters is going

Comments

[lied_ohne_worte]

I've one instance of electricity from a contemporary novel. In "Busman's Honeymoon" by Dorothy L. Sayers (written in 1937, and I think also taking place then), the protagonists buy an old house in a fictional village located in Hertfordshire and go there for their honeymoon. They have plans of modernising the house, including getting electricity. Dialogue scene in question

[sollersuk]

What the "light plant" needs is someone who can run a petrol (or similar) powered generator; a garage mechanic would be ideal for that.

Judging from the "Diary of a Provincial Lady", there were areas in rural Devonshire that did not have electricity of any kind in the early 1930s. Things could be very patchy; a couple of months ago a house in the North West of England got electricity for the first time. Basically, the more remote the area, the more expensive it was to put in the cables and the slower it was to get mains electricity. Lord Peter could probably bring pressure to bear; once mains electricity had reached Tallboys, it would be comparatively cheap for the rest of the village to be connected.

[lied_ohne_worte]

Aah, thanks - that explains things.

[rhiannon_s]

Would it realistically be the mid 1930s then for someone to be talking about introducing electricity to the rural West Country, or would it be earlier? I want the character in question to be keen on introducing it as something new and exciting, so I'd like it as early as is feasible for the area you see.

[madwriter]

As the comment above pointed out, this could vary widely, and also based on the economy of the area. There were power stations in Cornwall, I know, before WWI, but it could have been decades before electrification went to more remote regions. Here's a Wikipedia entry that might help since it includes dates the power stations opened:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_power_stations_in_England

[madwriter]

I forgot to mention that the spread of electrification would also depend on how much power the station generated.

[rhiannon_s]

Ah, I managed to miss that page. Thanks.

[lil_shepherd]

There were still homes without electricity - sometimes lit by gas - in the 1950s, and not all in isolated villages either!

[rhiannon_s]

Wow, I knew it took a while to get all the remote places connected up, but I though most of non-isolated places were pretty much wired up by that point. Electricity seems so intrinsic to the world these days it is hard to picture a time without it.

[inamac]

I have a cousin who is an electrician - he grew up in a house, in the 1960s, in a London suburb, which was still lit by gas.

As others have said, in rural England the spread of electrification was patchy, and largely depended on enlightened landlords - one of the local landlords in rural Essex installed an electricity generator for the estate tenants in the 1930s but did not electrify the main house until the 1960s.

[elfbert]

My parents bought a cottage in 1980, in Wiltshire, and it didn't have any electricity! It was on the outskirts of a small village - most of which, I assume, did have electricity. This cottage had just been very neglected. It had an open fire, one tap in the corner of one room, and the toilet was a walk up the field!

[rhiannon_s]

I remember, when I was very young, being taken on holiday to a cottage like that. I remember just enough of it for it to have been adventure, I'd hate to have to go back and live like that again though.

[jayb111]

This page is about London, but there is some general information that you might find helpful:
http://www.20thcenturylondon.org.uk/electricity-home

You might want to try searches such as rural life England 1920s or life in England 1920s. Or replace England with Devon or Cornwall, and 1920s with 1930s.